


Retrograde

by annalore



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-30
Updated: 2004-12-30
Packaged: 2019-07-15 06:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annalore/pseuds/annalore
Summary: Severus Snape does not want to be a Death Eater.





	Retrograde

Severus Snape does not want to be a Death Eater. It is his seventh and final year at Hogwarts, and he will be graduating soon. His motives are far from noble. He does not shy from dark magic, does not disagree with philosophies of pure blood superiority. But he does not wish to serve the Dark Lord.

He will regardless, of course. It is not only that he has nothing else to do, or that everyone he knows, everyone he is inclined to respect, is also serving. If that were the case, he would starve on the street rather than simply follow. It is something colder than that, harder and more complicated.

He is fiercely ambitious; for that, he was sorted into Slytherin. But his ambitions have always been his own. They are not tied into serving another as master. He wishes, like all boys who like to think they are men, for recognition in his own right. He wishes for power, for prestige, and in an offhand way, for acceptance.

He will serve because there is something ruthlessly realistic in him. He does not allow himself to entertain hopes that he knows will go unrealized. But there is a part of him that knows he will serve to deny every single time he’s wished he’d ended up in a different house. To erase every dream he’s had of having friends who accept and actually like him. To scour from his mind every feeling not entirely hateful he’s ever felt for Sirius Black.

The Snapes are one of the lesser pure blood families. Mere vassals to the Blacks and the Malfoys and their like. They are not equals, and as much as the outcast of the House of Black likes to think otherwise, he has been trained well. And there are many other reasons he would sooner lose a limb than acknowledge Severus Snape as a fellow human being, much less give him what he truly wants.

But Sirius Black does not know what Severus wants. He doesn’t know that beneath his contemptuous exterior, there’s a heart. A heart that aches and is hurt every time Black goads Potter into hexing him. If Black did know, he would only use the knowledge to hurt more, and in more directed ways.

It is not love, this feeling that curls through his belly, that tightens his chest with its urgency. Nor lust; he has Rosier warming his bed these days for that. It is something not so easily categorized, though somewhat akin to need. Severus has stopped trying to enumerate the ways in which he feels need for Black, the sacrifices of self he finds he would be willing to make for him.

If Sirius had ever once looked less unkindly at him, Snape thinks things might have turned out differently. If Black had ever once done anything to lighten the heavy weight that hangs about Severus’s shoulders, his chest, his throat, perhaps there would be a reason for things to be different.

As it is, there are nothing but dreams. Dreams of harsh lips, articulate hands, a long and muscled body. Dreams of Auror training or a Ministry job. An apartment in the ritzy section of London. Ways to be respectable. Ways to travel in the same circles as Sirius Black. Dawn-fog gray eyes, longish shaggy hair. A witty, and sometimes biting, tongue. Dreams of academic discussion over tea with Remus Lupin, because Lupin is closest to Black other than Potter, and doesn’t entirely hate him.

Severus Snape does not want to be a Death Eater, but he will become one regardless. He will, because his ruthless streak has categorized his dreams as hopeless, and his ambition will not let him waste his life for an emotion, a need, that will never be satisfied. He will choose the path of weakness, rather than of good. He will choose the comforts of Rosier and others like him. He will choose everything that is not brave or noble, everything a Slytherin should choose.

Sirius Black, after all, will consider him no more human if he does exactly the right things, and makes exactly the right sacrifices. Sirius Black has never given an inch, nor softened even slightly towards Severus Snape, and never will.


End file.
